Aspects of the present invention relate in general to computer operating systems, and more particularly, to methods for deploying those operating systems. Deploying an operating system to a computer is usually achieved by transferring an operating system image to a local disk of the computer on which the operating system is to be installed. The operating system image may be transferred either through a network or an attached local device. When using a network, the operating system image is transferred to the computer using a network boot capability such as peer exchange (PXE). A boot loader is then used to initialize the environment such that the necessary part of the operating system can be loaded into the main memory of the computer. Alternatively, the computer may boot from an attached device such as a Universal Serial Bus (USB) storage device. Both the boot loader and the operating system image are transferred from the storage device to the local hard disk of the computer. The operating system, once running, enables itself such that it can access the unread parts of the operating system image that have been transferred to the local disk.